First, Everyone should be aware that Shelf Engine actively asks and encourages all the headquarter staff to positively fill out surveys to submit to organizations for nominations for Best Places to Work that read like PR tips to win the award. Shelf Engine talks a good game of transparency and being a team, but this place is VERY much a hierchy - unless you are part of the leadership team or a director you are marginalized. They judge you around if you step up to the table but they really don't want to hear your ideas. You are pushed to be a high performer but do not get the full information you need to create and implement the work you are tasked with. They call it being scrappy, and part of a start up but it feels very much like you are being set up for failure and not given all the information you need to do a good job. I was constantly told to work on something and then once I delivered was then told that wasn't what they wanted. There are inequities with salary since they have no salary ranges. Recruiters and Managers decide who gets paid what and there is no consistencies. Job descriptions are pretty non existent and instead you are pushed to achieve goals thru a performance system that your success in achieving lack metrics and is subjective. There is a lack of career growth and no clear path for advancement. There are no raises unless you meet some criteria of "Beyond Exceptional" but there are no metrics to tell you what that is. They treat their Field and Operations employees like second class citizens. Unless you are a Director you will be discounted and marginalized. Their DE&I is pretty non existent and what is there is tinted with the "white guy" perspective of what DE&I should be. The CEO literally mansplained what DE&I is with a lecture about protecting White males after he was questioned why all the new leadership hired were white men from the same company (nepotism anyone?). They just added 2 holidays MLK and Juneteenth and cited it as a commitment to DE&I (which is really sad and insulting) but overall holidays are very stingy. No 401k match. Policy and Procedure is non existent and what there is is arbitrary. They call it being able to work within ambiguity but really it is disorganized chaos where departments are not in sync and the overall vision is driven by an arrogant and out of touch CEO, but hey, he'll post a witty quip on SLACK, so he's one of us, right? All the while he's talking about not discriminating against middle aged white guys. Women are paid less than their counterparts, and leadership hires people they know at higher wages. Your salary is literally dependent on who you know.
